The following description is provided to assist the understanding of the reader. None of the information provided is admitted to be prior art.
Log-structured file systems were created to reduce the disk access times of input/output (I/O) operations. To reduce disk access times, data writes are done sequentially. Data writes can also be queued together, such that multiple data blocks are written sequentially during a single write. As data is written sequentially, overwriting existing data results in both the new data and the old data being stored. To reclaim additional storage space, unused data blocks can be reclaimed through garbage collection.
Based upon the design of a log-structured file system, data contents of a file can be spread across the entire storage. To be able to access a file's data content, a map can be stored at a known, fixed location. This map can include a mapping of where a file's data content resides on the storage. Accordingly, when a file is accessed this map is consulted to determine where to retrieve the file's data contents. Because the map's location is fixed, the map can be accessed by simply reading the storage at the known, fixed location of the map.